Do you 'get' guitar theory the way you 'get' keys?

Maybe some fellow keys players here can help me out. I understand the keyboard. Building chords makes sense. Scales makes sense. It is all laid out there easy to see. I can play chords with my left hand and a finish off chords and play melodies with my right hand. Simple enough. If something gets confusing, I think about it in the key of C, or I'll just stay in C as often as I can. On keys for some reason, I can just pull out random songs made up on the spot.

Now, with guitar, I can't wrap my head around it! I can do scales. I know all the major chords. But that is where it all ends. I really wish I could just 'make stuff' up the way I do on the piano. Is there any secret out there that can make my brain 'connect' with the guitar the way I 'connect' with keys? I post this here because I know there are keyboard players here who also play guitar. For those who can just understand keys and guitar, is it the same type of understanding? Or did your brain have to learn to 'see' the fretboard in a much different way?

For me Guitar is more of a memorize chords and songs type of instrument. Memorize finger positions for chords. Memorize scales. I am very NON creative on the guitar. On Keys, no memory is really needed, I can play for hours and make up new stuff the whole time.

So can anyone help me out? How do I 'understand' the fret board better as a keys player?

Dunno Man. I'm the same way. Strings friggin baffel me. I think it's because black and whites are linear, logically laid out in sequence.

You just have to play it long enough. I started on guitar, and I can play and write instinctively on it. I'm in the same boat you are but on the opposite side, because now I'm trying to translate that onto keys, and it's difficult.

Like all instruments - practice practice practice. Know what note is where on the fingerboard. Learn movable chord forms and where the third, fifth, sixth, seventh, etc. is for each form so that you know how to change the chord by form memory and by knowing where the notes lie on the fretboard. After years of practice you can hear the note you are going to play on the fretboard before you play it - you just know what it is going to sound like.

Berklee method is a good place to start - chords, scales, positions, chord solos, etc.

Learning and practicing classical guitar helps to get good familiarity with the fingerboard (well it helped me). Studying the suggested fingerings for different pieces helps with learning how to string chord voicings and notes together in a way that makes "sense", meaning that there is a flow from one chord to the other that both sounds good and doesn't have you trying to jump up and down the fretboard.

Work on crossword puzzles! Learn to think of things within a framework of "X down, Y across".

I'm originally a guitarist and I played some piano too but I was more proficiant on the guitar and even made up some tunes with it over the years. Then I got a synth and learned alot of tunes on it and it struck me how simple it was laid out. On the guitar you can play the same note same octave in four to five places on the guitar fretboard! Same thing for chords too but you get more tonal variety that way and your fingers are in touch with the sound source, more expresive. A common thing for lead players to do is bend a note on one string to match one on another string playing them together. When you tune it you match the two same notes on two different strings. That's another thing you have to constantly tune it! But then you can bend notes and hit false harmonics, and its easy to retune it quickly or put it into different tunings quickly.

When I got into synths/samplers my creativity shot through the roof in and into the stratosphere. All the different sounds available, one or several per octave if you want. You'll never connect with the guitar the way you do with keys, its harder to play chords and melody together on a guitar but its much easier to play chord changes on a guitar. I mean you can just strum fast and slide a barre chord up and down the neck, or a seventh, 9th, minor chord, etc., good luck trying to do that on a keyboard. Its cool to be able to handle both.

Steve

Go get the book called "fretboard logic" (thank me later )

The first chapter is a text that discusses the things your wondering about ..... To give a thumbnail sketch ; it's all about the tuning baby!!!!!!

Guitarist can basically choose how to tune it , and the prevalent one thats become popular is fraught with compromise!! , it's the best way to be able to play in different keys and such ,also , realize , that because of this , guitarist will always be more comfortable in certian keys (especially when soloing).

If your going to want to play rock and distortion, then look into just tuning .

Guitar is interesting for me since it's more of a pattern-memorizing instrument... i.e. you learn the CAGED chord shapes and the scale patterns. Once you have those down then you can play pretty much anything in any key easily. And having learned music from a keyboard first I instinctively knew that C is after B and F as after E (no sharps)... which I'm guessing is a leap of faith for learning guitarists who aren't familiar with a keyboard.

With a keyboard all the notes are laid out linearly, but you have to memorize the circle of fifths in order to know what notes are sharp for what key. It's still a type of pattern recognition thing but simpler than the guitar.

I guess what I'm getting at is that when I see how the guitar is engineered I think that whomever invented it did so specifically to make changing song keys a no-brainer... you keep the same finger patterns you just change playing position on the fretboard. Genius.

But to get back to the subject, I think playing the guitar is very easy until it comes time to learn every note on every string... which is where I'm struggling right now. Now I'm wishing my guitar was more like my piano. But for beginners the CAGED system and scale patterns are easy and most of the work is just physical finger training and muscle memory.

And drop-D power chord playing with distortion and fx... jeez you use one finger to hold two strings and suddenly you're a rock star.

Thanks Gribs! this is what did it for me. My buddy wanted me to show him some guitar stuff and this is what I taught him. The major scale and how to form the chords and the popular shapes and minor and 7th variations. Practically all you need for rock guitar. The guy in my band hasn't played a 3rd or 7th in 2 years. All power chords all the time.

+1 for the Fretboard Logic series. Or look up CAGED online.

There really is no "guitar theory", just music theory.

Translating what you know from keys to guitar is just practicing the mechanics. What really flummoxes many keyboard players moving to string instruments is the fact that the same note is playable in many different locations and that some chord inversions that are trivial on a keyboard are insanely difficult on a guitar and vice versa.

Guitars are much easier than keys, when you figure out the way they work. With keys, for example, you need to learn what a scale looks like (which sharps, flats, etc.) for each key -- not so with guitar.

Here's the way I look at six strings:

Say you map out E natural minor all over the fretboard (first twelve frets only). You draw six strings on a piece of paper, for example, and make dots for the notes, perhaps highlighting the root for convenience.

OK, cool. Now you have Em down. Now, imagine that layed over the fretboard. If you want to change keys, you (mentally) shift that pattern up or down, and the drawn frets that - for example - pop over the 12th fret, simply wrap around and appear at the 1st fret.

The whole thing just slides up and down. Now you know everything Aeolian.

Here's what's snazzy; because all the usual diatonic modes use the same intervals, you've also learned Mixolydian, Ionian, etc - the lot. Just depends where you've slid that wrappable pattern to. Go from minor to major? Slide everything down four frets.

And you don't need to be aware of a single damn note apart from the root, assuming you play by ear. Just learn one pattern, and slide it around.

I can't read music, but I can get around on a guitar.

Now, someone tell me something to accelerate my keyboard playing?

It doesn't have to be of course. Once you learn basic chord construction (how to do it without an instrument - practice with pencil and paper if you have to), intervals, and put in some physical practice you'll be able to come up with the chords and melodies you need on the fly (and thus jam with others). I like this online tutorial - light on the pretty stuff, heavy on the information - because it introduces the beginning guitarist to theory first, then the fretboard:

http://lessons.mikedodge.com/

I just think of the fretboard as a chess board. The cat ate the knight and the queen moved like a bishop. Mate and win.

I like Berklee's Modern Method For Guitar because it's an approach that helps the reader avoid the trap of too much reliance on visual patterns - more conducive to a direct connection between what the player hears in his/her head and what gets played on the guitar instead of the eyes interfering as the middle man.

I especially recommend Vol. 1 with the DVD-ROM, because you can have Larry Baione play the other guitar part in the guitar duet pieces that are in the book. Can't go wrong with this plus the site I mentioned.

A few lessons with a GOOD teacher may be useful as well.

Each instrument has is strengths. Learn to utilize those strengths to your advantage.

Another important consideration is that since a guitar has open strings, some riffs work well in a certain chord progression.

It is necessary to retune the guitar to fit the particular song. Some common tuning variations are "drop" tuning of the lowest string. Another common guitar tuning is to decrease all strings by a 1/2 step or full step. When I play lead guitar, I usually have five guitars to cover several different tuning ranges. Each tuning requires modifications to the string size, truss rod and bridge intonation.

Guitars tends towards chords with wide note intervals. Keys allow chords with tight note intervals.

Mark

7 # 9

THIS is key.

I'm OK w/ keyboards and took years of piano, but i taught myself to play guitar by starting w/ slow simple Pink Floyd, moving along through funk & rhythm (Talking Heads songs are great fun to learn with), then graduating to jazz and classical forms.

I could not solo well without singing the parts first. By singing you truly FEEL the music emerge from inside, and become familiar with the intervals and tension between the notes in a much more precise way than by looking at keys and pressing them to make a sound.

Keyboard players as a whole exhibit nowhere near the subtlety and diversity that guitarists do when it comes to vibrato and bending notes expressively. Many, many guitarists can be distinguished by their vibrato alone. Jimi Hendrix, SRV, Clapton, Yngwie(the worst offender), and dozens more all 'tickle' the note differently and this contributes to the individual respective voice heard in their music.